Governance & Ownership
Who ends up holding what.
This is the page where somebody decides whether to trust us with their land, so it is the plainest page on the site. No mechanism described here is a favour, and none of it depends on anyone's opinion of anyone.
How the work is divided at the start
You bring the land. You carry the risk. We bring the model, the people and the capital pathway — and when we start, we operate. From there, performance earns greater control.
Without the asset you bring and the risk you carry, none of this exists.
That second line is not a courtesy and it is not flattery. There is no project without land, no funding application without an asset to raise it against, and nobody to carry the liability if the landholder does not. The division at the start is a division of labour between parties who each bring something the other cannot — it is not a verdict on anybody's capability, and nothing on this page should be read as one.
The central concept
Share and governance are two separate dials.
You can hold meaningful share without ever running the farm. That is a legitimate position, not a failure.
Scroll the diagram sideways →
The two lanes do not depend on each other. Declining governance does not reduce share, and holding share does not oblige anyone to run anything. Mechanism only — no split, no allocation and no figure is published on this site, because the equity structure is still being worked through with chartered accountants.
The share dial
Nobody sits at zero, at any stage.
- The landholder holds a meaningful share from day one — for the asset and for the risk. Not on completion of anything, not on achievement of anything. From the day the contract is signed.
- The operating team is paid properly before they own anything — well for their industry. Ownership is not offered as a substitute for a wage, and anyone who arrives at share has been earning a living the whole way there.
- Every additional track earned adds share — production, financial control, compliance and certification, processing and packaging. Each has its own written standard and its own release.
- Share does not go backwards. A track earned is earned. Nothing on this dial is contingent on anyone's continued approval.
Equity balance — in process with chartered accountants
We publish the mechanism and the principle. We do not publish percentage splits, share allocations or exit multiples, because the structure is still being worked through and a number published early would be argued about instead of understood. The arithmetic is worked through in conversation, against the actual project.
The governance dial
In sequence, so nobody has to ask what happens next.
01
Governance starts with us
Contractually, and stated as such in the agreement rather than assumed. This is the same reason set out on What We Deliver: at the start we are carrying the functions that kill farms.
02
First option always goes to the original owners
Before anyone else, every time. Nobody can say they were cut out of the farm on their own land, because the first offer is written into the contract rather than depending on how the relationship is going.
03
That option has a clock on it
Defined in the contract. A first option with no expiry would leave the farm unable to move on governance for as long as nobody decided anything — which is its own way of stalling a working asset.
Exact period — not yet settled
04
If not taken up, it flips to the operating team
If the original owners do not take the option, or do not meet the milestones within the defined period, the option passes to the operating team — who may then earn it on exactly the same terms. Not different terms. The same ones.
05
If neither wants it, we carry governance indefinitely
The farm still produces. Everyone still holds their share. Everyone still earns. This is a legitimate resting state of the model, not a breakdown of it.
There is no failure state in which the asset stops working.
That is the point of setting it out as a sequence. Every branch has a defined destination, and in every branch the farm is still farmed, the produce is still bought, the loan is still repaid and every party still holds their share.
An honest case, written out
The family who never wanted to farm.
A family owns the land. They have careers, businesses, other things on their hands. They never wanted to run a farm and do not want to now. They simply want the land to succeed, and to earn from it.
They hold a meaningful share from day one for the asset and the risk. They earn well. They take the first option on governance and decline it, or let the clock run out, and it passes to the operating team. Nothing about their share changes. Nothing about their standing in the project changes.
They are entirely within the model. This is not a cautionary tale and it is not a second-best outcome — it is one of the ordinary ways this works, and it is why share and governance were separated in the first place. A model that only rewards a landholder who is willing to become a farmer is a model that excludes most landholders.
Image outstanding
A landowning family who will never run the farm and never wanted to: two or three people on their own land, well dressed for their own lives, clearly proprietors rather than labourers, looking over a field that somebody else is working in the background. They are earning from an asset they hold. Not a handover, not a donation, not gratitude.
The community and traditional authority case
At scale, one landholder cannot govern forty farms.
Take a large communal landholding subdivided into many smallholder farms. The landholder — a chief, a traditional authority, a community property association — is not going to govern each one, and it would not be a good outcome if they tried.
Governance is earned by the operating teams, farm by farm, against the same written standard as everywhere else. And the majority of those teams came from that same community, through the pipeline: everyone in the community had access to the programme, and those who performed advanced.
The landholding itself never transfers. The community's share sits across the whole landholding rather than in one plot, so a single farm having a hard season is not a single family's disaster. And a community member who governs their own farm and a community member who chose not to enter the programme are both still holders of the community's share.
This is described as a model, not as a completed deployment. The programme is emerging; no communal landholding of this size is yet running at this scale.
Image outstanding
A large communal landholding subdivided into many smallholder farms: an elevated or drone view showing a patchwork of individually worked plots on one continuous landholding, each clearly in production, with tracks and irrigation between them. Scale and order, from land that was one dormant block.
In one line
Control that is shown without its release reads as capture.
So it is never shown that way here. Every function we hold appears on this site beside what releases it, what the standard is, and how long it takes — held and released, side by side, and track by track with the worked example.
If you hold land, the practical sequence — assessment, soil testing, pre-contract, contract, the costed package — is on its own page.